Congressman pushing to create tech jobs across the Midwest meets with Rockford leaders
By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
Get our newsletter
ROCKFORD — A Silicon Valley congressman who has made it part of his mission to bring technology jobs to the Heartland visited Rockford on Friday to hear from local leaders about how to restore manufacturing and other employment opportunities in the Midwest.
U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, who represents California’s 17th Congressional District, met with about 30 local business, political, economic development, health care, nonprofit and education leaders at Prairie Street Brewhouse for a roundtable discussion centered around jobs.
“For 40 years we’ve had policies that have allowed manufacturing to bleed, jobs go offshore, wealth and opportunities to pile up in a few places in this country. That’s got to change,” Khanna said. “We’ve got to bring manufacturing back, production back and we’ve got to give communities economic opportunity again.”
“Not just handouts after redistribution, but the opportunity to create value and build wealth,” he said. “We’ve got to mobilize the country to do this.”
Rockford news: Wreckage of former Atwood building to be cleared at no taxpayer expense
Khanna’s relationship with the city could pay dividends in the future. He’s considered a rising star in the Democratic Party, and last month Politico reported that advisors from Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign have privately encouraged Khanna to run for president if Biden doesn’t seek a second term.
Khanna said he won’t seek the office in 2024, but hasn’t ruled out running in 2028.
Presidential aspiration aside, Mayor Tom McNamara said he wants the city to build a relationship with the congressman leading the charge on creating more high-tech jobs in the Midwest.
“We want to attract more high-tech jobs,” McNamara said. “He knows the importance of manufacturing. He knows what today’s manufacturing is — and that it’s not the manufacturing of 30 years ago — and how we can use that to create more jobs.”
“We want to learn from him, and we believe we can teach him a fair amount of what’s actually happening on the ground every day here.”
(story continues below photo)
McNamara invited Khanna to the city after he learned the congressman was speaking in Monmouth, about 170 miles southwest of Rockford. The three-term U.S. representative said he admires McNamara’s work here and joked he wished he could have “stolen” the mayor from the city for Congress – a nod at McNamara’s consideration of running for Illinois’ 17th Congressional District before he ultimately opted against it.
More news: ‘Your city cares about you’: Rockford Promise has record number of scholars
Khanna has a previous relationship with the city, too, saying he visited before at the request of developer Sunil Puri, who he met while both were supporting John Kerry’s campaign for president.
“Rockford’s been such a pillar of manufacturing,” Khanna said. “One of the things I keep hearing is kids are leaving. That’s there’s a brain drain. I heard that when my parents left India, I didn’t think I’d expect that in the United States of America.”
Khanna walked precincts for Barack Obama during his first campaign for state Senate in 1996. In 2009, Obama appointed him deputy assistant secretary of the United States Department of Commerce.
He bills himself as a “progressive capitalist,” saying he believes in supporting markets, innovation and entrepreneurship without allowing excessive profiteering, price gouging or stifling competition.
He is the author of “Entrepreneurial Nation: Why Manufacturing is Still Key to America’s Future” and most recently “Dignity in a Digital Age: Making Tech Work for All of Us.”
He told the group that there is an $11 trillion market cap in his Silicon Valley District, but that’s not sustainable if it isn’t spread across the country.
“We’ve got to figure out how these technology jobs are not just in a few areas,” he said. “With the modern automobile being a computer on wheels, why can’t some of those jobs be in Michigan, Ohio and Illinois?”
